Notes from Watching Tenet

December 20, 2020

I love movies that make me think, and Tenet was a prime example. There were some abuses of science, sure, but the fundamental principle of determinism was everpresent in the movie, although they did try to claim free will did still exist, which doesn't make sense.

For people watching: you should watch the entire movie, then watch the first 29 minutes right after that. With subtitles.

Things I got first watch:

That he was fighting himself, like right when they decided to reverse themselves and go back to that incident.
Really thought that the device would look cooler than a stupid Thor hammer.
"Inverse radiation triggered by nuclear fission" has got to be a dumb thing to say.
In order to fight the future, you have to do something that the future can't discover. For the most part, that means not entering anything into any record that could be broken into or unsealed, otherwise they'll pass that information back to themselves/their allies in a time that came before you, and use that information to kill/stop you.

Things I got second watch:

First scene, he field strips the Russian guy's gun at the top of the opera house, kind of a great indicator that that was him later, because the mysterious suited in black guy does it to him.
The guy who saves him at the opera house with the inverted bullets is Neil (Edward), you can see as he runs away he's got the little orange thing. Realized this before they showed it close up.
"A cold war. To even know its true nature is to lose" is a reference to the fact that you need to not know to be safe.
When the scientist confronts him he works "Tenet" into the conversation while doing the hand gesture.
The reason Neil knows that the protagonist doesn't drink on the job I suppose is because Neil and him have been friends for years. Although wouldn't he need oxygen to go reversed? Maybe he went backwards and now he's doing the entire thing forwards knowing what they knew years later. (in this case, he doesn't need oxygen)
She also says "tenets" and does her hands, I missed like all of these. (the scientist)
So the british dude (Batman guy) says that the russian dude, the main bad guy, has tapped into the intelligence services and is feeding them rubbish, so basically anything they know, he knows. Clearly the bad powers have hacked into the intelligence services in the future and have all of the info, or are pulling the info from dumps from hacks that occurred sometime after these events but before the future people wanted to send info.
The end of the movie (nuke test) seemed to happen at the exact same time as the end of the start of the movie (opera). The british guy says that they were the same time. So it seems like Neil also made it to the Opera somehow, he was at both places. Also, he says that Sator (bad guy) in the 70s was from that area when some sort of accident occurred, and that's the same place the nuclear test was. I think future bad guys after the collapse of the soviet union did a reverse bomb that would allow Sator to get gold, plutonium (from the nuclear warhead), and information on how to do the reversal of time. He built his fortune with all of this knowledge they kept sending him. The ultimate goal was that he would reverse time or something, allowing them to go back to the past where global warming basically didn't happen.
It's hard to know what the significance of the painting is. The spaniard who faked the painting, all this stuff, apparently she was close with him. Did she know it was a fake? Was it a plant the entire time to allow him to marry her, to get her close to him and hate him, so that she would kill him? Or was it more simple.
What the fuck. "Arepo" is "Opera" spelled backwards. Arepo is the guy who forged the painting. I really wonder if this is significant. Goya apparently also painted the cruelty and horror of war in his paintings. She calls him "Tomas", I suppose it was "Tomas Arepo". She also says that he no longer walks anywhere, and he doesn't speak on the phone either? Weird. Who is Arepo.
I think the fact that they can't tell is a forgery is because it was made in the future with superior technology, sent back, and is being used. Basically you have two future factions, fighting a war against each other. One faction wants the world to reset, go back in time, and they are "funding" Sator, and the others are "funding" the Americans, the protagonist, etc, and they're sending things back in time like the painting to set events into place to undermine Sator.
Rotas, the name of the construction company, is Sator backwards.
She seems to call him "Rotas" at one point, which is weird. A mess-up, or an intentional indication of something deeper?
The guy who took the gold bar. idk what that was about, i thought it was the guy who showed up later but he looks a lot younger when he shows up. Could he have gone back in time? idk. No, turns out it was just some random guy, this was just to show his cruelty to his workers.
When they go into the rooms, in the center of the freeport, one of them has a red seal and the other has a blue seal next to it, indicating which direction in time they're in basically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality This is the key to all of this, does have some interesting basis, not sure how macroscopic it could really be. Also this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe
I still don't understand why the Plutonium 241 was in the Opera house in Kiev that day. Like why. The Indian woman seems to say the CIA team had it, but why?
He obviously knew to remove the painting from the vault because it became public record that there was an explosion/break in, so there was no way they could have done something that high profile without it being known.
Ok, as known, basically they left him stuff directed to him, he killed the other guy who was helping get the plutonium. They either caused that explosion in the 1970s or they knew it was going to happen and buried stuff there.
After the pillow was thrown at her, the next scene it was still on the bed where as in the original it fell off the bed
The guy who took the gold bar was just one of the guys who he had assigned to pick it up, that was all.
What's the meaning of the side view mirror being broken before they even start the car gun fight? That it was shot with an inverted bullet? Yeah, that's right, it was hit by an inverted car.
Keeping them moving but cutting the radios is brilliant, made the police think everything was fine.
But for the car fight scene, why was the car driving backwards?
Definitely a bit of a "save the princess" theme, typical sexist stereotype from video games, like saving her in the car.
At exactly halfway through the movie, basically, is when you start to see people going backward through time.
I definitely have trouble following the interrogation scene.
If you don't see yourself reverse exit the turnstile, you're not getting out? What does that mean exactly, like would you just die inside?
Did they really have to call it "The algorithm", I mean come on.
Got it, so basically the future scientist hid each of the 9 parts of the algorithm in each nuclear containment facility, the world's 9 nuclear powers, that way it would be very difficult or impossible to break into all 9. But why not just destroy the thing...
His conversation with Priya is a great example of determinism. He has the conversation to try to change the past, but he can't, he didn't change her mind, she proceeds exactly as planned, and tells him to get the 241. In a lot of ways, this movie is him battling against his own fate, and realizing it's inevitable.
Priya does say that there are some people in the future who want to continue the algorithms journey into the past, and they created Tenet, so is this the "good guys" in the future? I'm a bit confused by "continue the algorithm's journey into the past" part.
So not only do they have to get the algorithm thing by the countdown, but they also need to do it without him being able to know it in the future, otherwise he can just figure out how to stop them.
Also yeah, so the Yacht in Vietnam, Opera Siege, and the attack on the nuclear test site all happened at the exact same time.
"That explosion seals up the algorithm", what in the actual fuck does that mean.
When he's running and gets thrown into the air from the concrete going in reverse after getting blown off a building, how does that work? The concrete wasn't reversed right? How could reverse ordinance cause other things that it hits to go in reverse? Seems like a flaw.

What I think is happening is:

Start, Opera, he's just CIA and he is trying to stop the attack on this guy. The private russians who are attacking are trying to get that part of the device.